Omori tips Bassmaster title his way on late haul

Win in bass-fishing event is first by foreign national

Outdoors

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - After struggling for most of the day, Takahiro Omori changed his lure and changed his life yesterday by becoming the first foreign national to win the Bassmaster Classic.

A resident of Emory, Texas, who was born in Tokyo, Omori caught a three-day total of 15 bass weighing 39 pounds, 2 ounces to win the Classic on Lake Wylie and the $200,000 first prize. Aaron Martens of Castaic, Calif., was second (36-6) and won $50,000.

Kevin VanDam of Kalamazoo, Mich., the 2001 Classic champion, was third at 35-11. Dean Rojas of Grand Saline, Texas, who led going into the final day, finished fourth at 35-5.

"This is the best day of my life," said Omori, 33. "Winning the Classic was my goal for a lifetime."

Omori needed some last-minute heroics to win the tournament known as "the Super Bowl of bass fishing." After catching his second keeper at 9 a.m., he did not get a bite for nearly five hours.

He had been pitching a jig and a plastic creature bait to laydowns along the shoreline. The strategy had produced a stringer weighing 16-2 and the first-day lead on Friday. Saturday, Omori had only five small bites and his stringer weighing 9-8 dropped him to second place, 10 ounces behind Rojas.

At 1:45 p.m. yesterday, with the water level falling in the lake (which was created 100 years ago by damming the Catawba River) to generate electricity for Duke Power, Omori decided to try something different.

"I had a feeling inside me to change techniques," he said. "I backed off and fished the deeper side of the laydowns with a crankbait. Three minutes later, I got a 3-pounder."

After missing a couple of bites, Omori saw it was 2:10. He needed to leave at 2:15 to make it back to the launch ramp in time. His next cast produced his biggest fish of the day, a 4-plus-pounder. Two minutes later he caught another nice keeper, then he headed to the ramp, arriving with five minutes to spare.

Hours later at the weigh-in at the Charlotte Coliseum, Omori needed 10-12 to take the lead over Martens. When Omori pulled his big bass out of his boat and brought it to the scales, "I knew it was over," Martens said.

Omori's stringer weighing 13-8 meant Rojas, the last to weigh in, needed 12-15 to win. When the scales settled at 9-1, Omori raised his arms in the air, then knelt on the floor and slapped his hands on the weigh-in stage in celebration of his improbable victory.

"I didn't expect to win this week," Omori said. "I had the fish in practice [at the end of June] but not this week because the way I was fishing was junk fishing. I had to move around and work hard every day."